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A bouquet of fallacies from Gary Becker and Stephen Dubner

Stephen Dubner quotes Gary Becker as saying: According to the economic approach, therefore, most (if not all!) deaths are to some extent "suicides" in the sense that they could have been postponed if more resources had been invested in prolonging life. Dubner describes this as making "perfect sense" and as being "so unusual and so valuable." When I first saw this I was irritated and whipped off a quick entry on the sister blog. But then I had some more systematic thoughts of how Becker's silly-clever statement, and Dubner's reaction to it, demonstrate several logical fallacies that I haven't…

What's New on ScienceBlogs.de

It's been a little over a week since ScienceBlogs launched a beta version of its first daughter site, in German. Today, we present what we hope will be the first of many informal updates on what's buzzing among the 13 German-language blogs at ScienceBlogs.de. (Unless noted, links will take you to posts in the original Deutsch.) Thanks to German Sb editor Beatrice Lugger for her translations. 1. The UN on Forests The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali wasn't the only scientifically-interesting UN activity in the first half of December. The United Nations Forum on Forests had a…

Jobs: work with Project Exploration!

POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT: Title: Manager of Web and Publications Reports to: Director of Operations Project Exploration Background: Cofounded in 1999 by paleontologist Paul Sereno and educator Gabrielle Lyon, Project Exploration is a nonprofit science education organization that works to make science accessible to the public-- especially minority youth and girls--through personalized experiences with science and scientists. Project Exploration meets its mission through youth development programs, services for schools and teachers, and public programs such as exhibits and online initiatives.…

Online Social Media: Taming the Beast for the Classroom Part I

ejbSF's Flickr photostream My office is often a flurry of activity with students coming with a wide array of questions. Whenever possible, I respond to their questions via email. Last Fall, one of our students expressed dismay when I told her I would respond to her request with an email. "Email, Dr. Toney? That's so old fashioned." After some thought, I realized she was right. After all, I sent my first email message sometime before the class of 2014 was born (in the early to mid 1990's), so it should be no surprise that this form of communication could be seen as quaint. It is…

What do you think are the most important events in politics, science, the environment, etc. this year?

This is what I was thinking: Nationally and globally, the most important events probably included the Earthquake in Haiti (not to minimize the importance of the current, ongoing cholera epidemic there); the dramatic increase of the use of stem cells in therapy (and research) with some real potential for cures just around the corner; Tiger Woods did not get laid all year; Iceland's volcanic eruption and its effects on European travel; New research shows that tigers are about to become extinct in the wild and there isn't much we can do about it, though token efforts will be made; The end of the…

Redefining 'Redneck' and Faux Populism

One of things I never got around to blogging about after the 2008 election was how lower-income whites do vote Democratic, even in the South, despite misperceptions on both the left and right to the contrary. In that vein, Amanda, commenting on Alexandra Pelosi's campaign documentary, clarifies a phenomenon that I couldn't quite jibe with the polling data (and the long history of lower income whites voting for Democrats at higher rates than other white economic groups). What we're witnessing is the transformation of a class-based term into a culture-based one: But please look past the…

Failing the Pepsi Challenge

It took a couple of days, but the overlords at SEED Media Group have aborted the Food Frontiers blog. If anyone is still wondering why so many members of the Scienceblogs community abandoned ship after we learned that Pepsi had bought itself blogging space at SB, as good an explanation as any can be found in an email I received Thursday from a friend of the family. She had copied me on a letter she had written to SB CEO Adam Bly: I am just a lay reader but reasonably well educated (law degree, clinical psychology BS summa cum laude). I follow climate and science issues as closely as I can -…

Shout Out to sciencegeekgirl!

This week we have found a couple of bloggers who have promoted the festival on their blogs! A shout out to Dr. Stephanie Chasteen at sciencegeekgirl with a blog post this week about the festival! Do you have a blog and would like to help us get the word out about the science festival? Contact us if you have written a post about the festival. We will give you a shout out, re-post it here and link to your blog. Thanks! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From sciencegeek girl's blog post on March 10: USA Science & Engineering Festival - October in DC Sorry…

The Indonesian vaccine problem again

Indonesia has still to provide the WHO flu surveillance program with any H5N1 viral isolates since the first of the year. The issue is access to what will certainly be a scarce vaccine supply if a pandemic would start in the next five or or even ten years. The leading candidate for a pandemic strain at the moment is one that starts in Indonesia, the world's current hotspot for avian influenza both in poultry and people. So controlling access of vaccine makers to H5N1 isolate from within its borders recognizes they have something the rich countries that have the vaccine plants need. One reason…

McCain on climate change: Bush league

For all you climate change deniers out there dismayed at John McSame's apparent embrace of global warming, you have nothing to fear: John McCain had the eager press lined up on this one for weeks. He was going to take a stand and differentiate himself from Bush by offering his solution to climate change. And today was the momentous day. McCain made his speech and no less than the New York Times dutifully trotted out an article titled McCain Differs With Bush on Climate Change. (Devilstower at Daily Kos) The 71% of the electorate thinks the globe is warming and of these, human activity is…

Failure of pandemic preparedness: look in the mirror [rant alert]

The AP's Margie Mason is a pretty good flu reporter and she has a story on the wires today whose title encapsulates the bird flu history of the last four years: Bird flu continues march 4 years later. The number of human deaths is still not large -- a few hundred -- just a day at the office in Iraq. But the virus just keeps extending its geographic range in poultry stocks and wherever it does it there is a risk of human infections. Fourteen countries so far have officially confirmed influenza A/H5N1 cases. The number of birds killed by infection or slaughtered to prevent the spread of…

Grant writing

Writing a big grant proposal can be an all consuming affair. At least it's consuming all of me. And it's not because it's my first time. I wish. In fact it's the fourth time I'm doing this particular competitive renewal for a mega research program I've managed to keep continuously funded for 16 years. But each 5 year cycle it gets tougher, not easier and I wind up thinking about it all the time. The whole experience is reminiscent of the story of the World War I doctor given the task of selecting one of three volunteers for a dangerous and urgent mission. There was only time to ask each…

Profiting from others' suffering---the difference between skeptical doctors and crooks

Morgellons "disease" is not a disease in any classic sense. There are no agreed-upon definitions of a case, so all else is meaningless. That being said, people are suffering. Since they feel ignored by doctors, they seek help elsewhere. It's a problem in thinking, in some ways. When you don't feel well, you should seek help from a professional and see what they think, rather than have a fixed idea of what's wrong, and find a professional to confirm it. Otherwise, we wouldn't need professionals. I could simply call my chest pain "Pal's chest pain syndrome", and, no matter what the…

Yoko has an opponent

This is actually somewhat interesting, and I'm not going to reject all of it out of hand. The Fair Use Project of Stanford Law School is going to defend the use of Lennon's song "Imagine" in the movie Expelled. On the one hand, they are using a very short clip — and I am not a fan of the kind of draconian enforcement of every second of a song that the music industry seems to favor. There are reasonable grounds for fair use of short clips of music … the question is whether this is one of those cases. On the other hand, I think Premise is horribly dishonest, and this press release is personally…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Boy Or Girl? It's In The Father's Genes: A Newcastle University study involving thousands of families is helping prospective parents work out whether they are likely to have sons or daughters. The work by Corry Gellatly, a research scientist at the university, has shown that men inherit a tendency to have more sons or more daughters from their parents. This means that a man with many brothers is more likely to have sons, while a man with many sisters is more likely to have daughters. The Last Neandertals? Late Neandertals And Modern Human Contact In Southeastern Iberia: It is widely accepted…

Facebook News and (my) Views

Let's start with some Essential Facebook Readings of the day: The Facebook Juggernaut...bitch! Where are Facebook's Early Adopters Going? Hmmm, Facebook: a new kind of press release All your widgets are belong to Facebook Why We're Like a Million Monkeys on Treadmills Facebook: the new data black hole What would get me (and others) to shut up about Facebook? Why I Dropped Scoble and Seceded from the Hunt for Newer Shinier Things My predictions for the near future, and I'll explain them below: 1) In a Clash Of Titans, Google turns iGoogle into something better than Facebook. Facebook is…

Iceland's Freezeout

So how did the li'lest economy get frozen first? So Iceland's economy is facing an interesting shock, first banks failing and now foreign currency reserves running out. How they got there is interesting, and also a pointer to how they'll get out. (this is my perspective, from the outside, I am not a financial analyst) Iceland deregulated in the late 80s and 90s, moving from an economy hinged on a single line of export, to an aggressive modern anglo-american style post-industrial economy, tech heavy, and heavily leveraged making aggressive finanical investments in niche markets. Iceland got…

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus!

Whew, dodged a mistake — the movie is on RIGHT NOW! An alert reader caught me in time and let me know I live in the Central Time Zone. I haven't even touched the hooch yet. It starts with Deborah Gibson, Submarine Pilot, dodging angry whales, and...breaking a giant octopus out of a block of ice? And it then destroys an oil drilling platform? I'm confused. That means I have to take a sip. (No, not a drink. I plan to survive this event. A shark just leapt up and ate a jetliner? What the hell? OK, big drink. Never mind survival. I may not make it through this abomination. It's not just the…

Soccer Observations

I gained about fifty pounds my freshman year in college (from ~190 lbs in high school to ~240 labs by the end of the year), owing to taking up rugby and a beer-heavy diet. Since then, people who meet me generally assume that I played football in high school-- in fact, that was probably the biggest indicator of the weight gain (other than, you know, clothes fitting differently)-- people stopped asking me whether I played basketball, and started asking what position I played in football. In fact, I never played organized football-- basically because the coach when I was in Jr. High was a jerk,…

New Lab Rodent Recommendations Rile Researchers

Research using lab rats or mice funded by the NIH is regulated by a set of guidelines that have very recently been upgraded. Mother rats and mice with litters are now recommended to have more room than current guidelines require. The new guidelines are not hard and fast rules, but researchers are concerned that not following these guidelines would jeopardize funding, and it appears from my reading of them that the new cage size guidelines are minimum requirements that must be met. The main difference that is causing some discussion about the new guidelines is that cages that hold females…

Ruins of Childhood

The other day I found and photographed another tree house ruin. I decided to re-post the following piece from September 2006 and make these things a steady presence on Aard, with a category tag of their own. If you've ever taken a walk in the woods near a housing area, you've seen them: modern archaeological sites, full of artefacts and building debris, abandoned to the elements in a way that is unusual in the well-organised industrialised world. They're settlement sites of a particular subculture with its own rules and customs, thriving on the fringes of mainstream society. I'm referring to…

Life's a riot with JA vs JA

"I am the milkman of human kindness, I will leave an extra pint". But not today; try Dover beach if you want me being nice. In this strange shadowy incestuous world of the blogosphere, it is hard sometimes to remember that there's an outside world, and even otherwise well-informed and intelligent people find the banter somewhat confusing. In this case the offending item is a tweet of mine, and I keep forgetting that Twitter forwards my tweets to fb, where people not in the know may actually read them. And the offending words are: This definitely wins tweet of the month, and quite possibly of…

Caesar's Bath Meme

I saw this on John Coleman's blog and thought it was an interesting idea. You should be reading Coleman's work, by the way. He is on the staff of Crux, the pro-ID magazine, but he is a really bright and thought provoking writer. Anyway, the meme is this: Behold, the Caesar's Bath meme! List five things that people in your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but you can't really understand the fuss over. To use the words of Caesar (from History of the World Part I), "Nice. Nice. Not thrilling...but nice." Well this could be interesting. Only five? Okay, in no particular order...…

Unintelligent Design and Eternal Life

Writing at the Huffington Post, John Blumenthal offers a humorous take on intelligent design: Thanks to Michele Bachmann, the tired concept of Intelligent Design has once again become a topic of conversation among Creationists, most of whom, ironically, often sound like Neanderthals. In case you don't know, this boneheaded theory claims that the human body is simply too remarkable to have come into being through millions of years of haphazard evolution, and that some super-intelligent deity must have been the engineering wizard behind the miracle of our anatomies. Miracle? Really? If you're…

What I Did on My Summer Vacation, Part Two

Of course, I also had time to explore Philadelphia a bit. Vacations are not built on chess alone. During my explorations I stumbled upon the Reading Terminal Market. It's a pretty spectacular collection of small concessions, most of them selling food of one sort or another. Here are a few random shots to give you the flavor: That one had me wanting to buy some veggies and make a big salad in my hotel room, but there were a few practical problems with that. That's a lot of sausages. Sadly, a handful of photos can't really capture the feel of the place. It seems to go…

Why Every Dog Should Love Quantum Physics 5: Sunlight

How to Teach Physics to Your Dog goes on sale in fine bookstores everywhere tomorrow. But maybe the four previous posts explaining why dogs should care about quantum physics haven't yet convinced you to go buy a copy. So here's another reason, one appropriate to this solstice season, when dogs in the Northern Hemisphere will start to enjoy longer days again: Sunlight. You like sunlight, right? Of course you do, unless you're a vampire. And what dog doesn't like a sunny day? Well, you have quantum physics to thank for sunlight, because as hot as the Sun is, it's not nearly hot enough to burn…

Links for 2009-12-10

The Elusive Open Mind: Ten Years of "EVERYONE THINKS they are open-minded. Scientists in particular like to think they have open minds, but we know from psychology that this is just one of those attributes that people like to apply to themselves. We shouldn't perhaps have to worry about it at all, except that parapsychology forces one to ask, "Do I believe in this, do I disbelieve in this, or do I have an open mind?" The research I have done during the past ten or twelve years serves as well as any other research to show up some of parapsychology's peculiar problems and even, perhaps, some…

NYC Trip: American Museum of Natural History

Some colleagues organized a bus trip to New York yesterday, which I went on, on the grounds that a) it was cheap, and b) in a few months, we won't be doing much traveling at all for a while. This required me to get up at an ungodly hour to catch the bus on campus, and the trip itself reminded me of why I don't take public transit, but on the whole, it was a good day. And, of course, blog fodder. The purpose of the trip was to take students from the intro Astronomy classes to the American Museum of Natural History to see the planetarium show (cue Fountains of Wayne). As this show takes less…

Saturday Football - the Duel in the Desert

It's the last regular season game for ASU - the Territorial Cup game against the University of Arizona Wildcats. At the beginning of the season, I don't think anyone would have predicted that ASU would have a 3-5 PAC-10 record and U of A (4-4) would have beaten three ranked opponents in a row entering into this game. Both teams have a 6-5 record overall and the winner gets a (possible) bowl game. U of A hasn't been in a bowl games since 1998; ASU has been in five since then. An ASU win would send the team to the Emerald Bowl on December 27th. Best case scenario for coach Dirk Koetter is…

Friday Bookshelf - The Second X

It's Friday and though I have no heart for blogging, I promised you last week a new feature called "Friday Bookshelf". I feel some obligation to deliver, especially since I can't seem to get the damn Joy of Science discussion posts finished and now I'm sure they'll take even longer with this new blog malaise on top of a weekend full of activities planned by Mr. Zuska. I've had migraine all day and I haven't eaten so this is bound to be a mess, but for what it's worth... I made a daring move and took the SECOND book off my bookshelf. It's called The Second X: The Biology of Women by…

Why the Mona Lisa's eyes follow you around

[originally posted on March 16, 2005] I've taken only two pictures of the Mona Lisa, and both turned out about the same: they captured the frenzied attempts of dozens of tourists trying to take a picture of the most-recognized image in the world. Here's the one I took last summer: I hadn't noticed it until now, but the motion of the painting in the background seems to mirror the chaotic struggle of the tourists with their cameras. I wonder if the Louvre's curators placed it there as a sort of an inside joke. But this post isn't about museum curators, it's about one feature of the Mona Lisa…

Why the Mona Lisa's eyes follow you around

I've taken only two pictures of the Mona Lisa, and both turned out about the same: they captured the frenzied attempts of dozens of tourists trying to take a picture of the most-recognized image in the world. Here's the one I took last summer: I hadn't noticed it until now, but the motion of the painting in the background seems to mirror the chaotic struggle of the tourists with their cameras. I wonder if the Louvre's curators placed it there as a sort of an inside joke. But this post isn't about museum curators, it's about one feature of the Mona Lisa that's supposed to mark Leonardo as a…

Where's the science?

Around this time last year the New York Times listed 100 "Notable Books of 2007." Chad was upset that there were no science books on the list, and so was I. I penned a rant about this sad state of affairs, but Carl Zimmer (an occasional contributor to the NYT) made a point that made me eat my words. This subject has come up once again now that the 2008 list from the NYT is out, which Chad still feels is sorely lacking in science titles despite there being several science books on this year's list; I firmly believe that this is a big part of why we're messed up as a society-- the most…

Framing Atheism? Sport and Spectacle in the SciBling Colosseum

Gladius in one hand and scutum in the other, I enter the SciBling Colosseum... Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant (Gladiators didn't actually say that, but adds a nice touch, no?) Matt and Revere are already battling over two topics that always seem to provide a good show for spectators and participants in the blogosphere: Framing and Atheism Read their posts for full disclosure, but to recap: Nisbet: * Dawkins et al. have generated more discussion of atheism and critiques of religion, but is the this particular brand of discussion productive? Not only is it polarizing, but it lacks a…

New insight into what makes things appear "glossy"

What makes something look glossy? At first, it doesn't seem like a difficult question -- it's something smooth and reflective. But if you were to attempt to draw something that looked glossy, how would you to it? Now, the problem suddenly gets a lot more difficult. Taking a look at a photo of a glossy object might give you some clues. Here's an example: I took this picture of my watch using the webcam on my computer. Notice that you can see the reflection of the computer screen in the bottom half of my watch face. You can't see it on my face though -- my face isn't glossy. So one component…

More commentary on animal rights extremists.

In an op-ed by Tim Rutten in today's Los Angeles Times: No sensible person dismisses the humane treatment of animals as inconsequential, but what the fanatics propose is not an advance in social ethics. To the contrary, it is an irrational intrusion into civil society, a tantrum masquerading as a movement. It is a kind of ethical pornography in which assertion stands in for ideas, and willfulness for argument, all for the sake of self-gratification. At the end of the day, there is no moral equivalence between the lives of humans and those of animals. I think this is essentially the point…

Louis Agassiz + Alexander Agassiz + Charles Darwin + Coral Reefs = High Entertainment and Science!

There are many fascinating stories linked to the early days of evolutionary biology and geology, and more than one of them is intertwined with our understanding of coral reefs. I had always thought that Darwin's interaction with the question of how coral reefs form was central to Darwin's own formation as a scientist, in part because of Charles Lyell. Lyell was the Big Kahuna of geology and earth science of the day, and had more or less established the standing theory of how coral reefs formed. Darwin, on observing reefs "in the wild" very quickly realized that Lyell was mostly wrong, and…

I don't mind working nights

Friday, Thursday, Sunday--when you're working the night shift, they're all just words. Days run into other days and their names become meaningless, signifiers only of times when the mail comes and when it doesn't. I don't mind working nights for a couple of weeks at a time. There's a kind of camaraderie among the members of the night shift, a smirk we share when we catch each others' eyes in the elevator and the coffee line. We all know that what we are doing is not normal, and in some way prevents us from being completely normal. And, we say with that smirk, it's cool. When I work nights,…

"Julian Assange Denounces Hactivists"

That would be an interesting headline to see. Even more interesting is the fact, as far as I know, that we haven't seen it. For that, there should be consequences. Rant below the fold. Not work safe. Grrrrrrrr. Julian Assange and his Hactivists can kiss my ass. Did you hear that? KISS MY FUCKING ASS!!!! I've gotten more "your password was compromised" emails in the last day or so than I've ever seen since the beginning of the Internet. Why? Because you have the maturity and perspective of an overtired baby with diaper rash. Item: According to their own Rhetoric, Julian Assange is…

2012: an actual review

Julia ended up with a minor concussion today. Too many face palms during the movie 2012! But seriously folks, we did just watch the movie 2012, and I can make a few comments on it. I'd like to start out by making a list of academic and applied areas that were butchered by the movie: Ship building Geosciences (all of them) Aerodynamics Physics (all areas) Geography Archaeology Political Science Psychology But otherwise, it was fun. The premise of the movie is that the Mayans had it right: At the winter solstice 2012, which is the end of the 13th cycle of the current Long Count, the world…

The "R" word: why we shouldn't fear health care rationing

An easy way to kill a debate on health care policy is to use the "R" word. We saw this early in the HCR debate with overheated talk of "death panels" and other nonsense. But we ignore the real issue of rationing at our own peril. Those of us who favor real HCR must embrace rationing, coopt it, show our opponents how it is inevitable. Nowhere is the the Right more hypocritical than the issue of health care rationing (OK, maybe with sex stuff, but...). Everyone who studies American health care knows that we already ration; we just do it irrationally. Current rationing allocates resources…

Terry Pratchett and the ubiquity of negligent chance

As you all should know, the inimitable Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He's writing about it as long as he can, and so far he's remarkably lucid and open…and also, you can tell, a bit angry at the sheer arbitrariness of the disease and the difficulty in finding treatment for it. …it is strange that a disease that attracts so much attention, awe, fear and superstition is so underfunded in treatment and research. We don't know what causes it, and as far as we know the only way to be sure of not developing it is to die young. Regular exercise and eating sensibly are…

WSJ Reporter on Iraq

I posted a bit of this email from a Wall Street Journal reporter in Baghdad in the Andrew Sullivan post below, but there's more worth reading in it. It's hard to pinpoint when the 'turning point' exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq's population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President…

Adam "Dreamhealer" and science: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

I wil probably lose some respect from some of my readers by admitting this, but I've always had a bit of a soft spot for Dan Brown novels. I actually enjoyed The Da Vinci Code immensely as a jolly good read, as long as you're not too much of a stickler for anything resembling historical accuracy. Ditto Angels & Demons, although even I cringed at one of the most ham-handed bits of author foreshadowing every put into a highly popular novel. (Those of you who've read Angels & Demons no doubt know exactly what I'm talking about.) In fact, I'll probably eventually get a copy of Dan Brown's…

Yet more on uneasy symbiosis of mainstream and citizen journalism

The note below was originally a response to a comment that Bora Z left on my "More on uneasy symbiosis (mashup? smashup?) of mainstream and citizen media, but given the interest in this subject I thought I best give it its own post. Thanks for writing, Bora. The limitations of small papers that you point out echo closely Helen Branswell's comments in Effect Measure's post; she defended an all-subjects-reporter colleague (whom I take it had been slighted about his flu reporting) along similar lines, noting that he had too much ground to cover to do them all in the sort of depth she was able…

The Implications of the First Derivative for Unemployment

In short: seven long years. A few months, when everyone was getting all het up about the observation that the rate of increase in the unemployment rate (the second derivative) was decreasing--that is, more and more people were losing jobs, but more and more wasn't growing as fast as it once was, that struck me as pretty thin gruel. Well, the implications of the first derivative--the change in unemployment--are pretty grim too. Mark Thoma: How long will it take the unemployment rate to go back down to 5 percent? A rough estimate can be obtained by looking at the rate of decline in the…

GOOD and U.S. Air Force Call for Contributors to “Mind of a Quadrotor” Project

Guest Blog from the USA Science & Engineering Festival Sponsor United States Air Force The U.S. Air Force and GOOD are pleased to announce the start of the  second project in The Air Force Collaboratory, an interactive online platform  that invites science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)  inclined students, educators and innovators to solve some of the Air Force’s toughest challenges. Over 900 ideas have already been submitted by participants in the first project of The Air Force Collaboratory, “Search and Rescue 2.0.” Contributors, whether new or returning, are now asked…

How to attend a poster session in Second Life

I've been reading quite a bit lately about Universities setting up virtual classrooms in Second Life, so when Bertalan Meskó from ScienceRoll invited me to come give a poster, I decided it was time to take the plunge. Besides, I'm going to be teaching an on-line bioinformatics course this spring for Austin Community College, so this seemed like a good time to find out what the fuss is all about. Tomorrow, Bora Zivkovic (A Blog Around the Clock) and I will be the first ScienceBloggers (that I know of) to give poster presentations in Second Life. Our talk will be at 4 pm GMT, 12 noon EDT, and…

We're Nation approved

Writing a pseudonymous blog day after day can be wearing, especially as you get no personal recognition for it. That's the point of a pseudonym, after all. But sometimes things happen that are even better than personal recognition. On January 6, 2009, Vintage Books published the trade paperback original of THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION, edited by Richard Lingeman and Scienceblogs.com is recognized in it and Effect Measure gets a special mention. Here's a promotional description:. Part Whole Earth Catalog, part 1000 Places to See Before You Die, and part Zagat, THE NATION GUIDE TO THE NATION…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Fruit Flies And Global Warming: Some Like It Hot: Researchers working in Australia have discovered ways in which fruit flies might react to extreme fluctuations in temperature. Short-term exposure to high heat stress ("heat hardening") has been known to have negative effects on Drosophila. But Loeschcke and Hoffmann discovered that it can have advantages too. Flies exposed to heat hardening were much more able to find their way to bait on very hot days than were the flies that were exposed to cooler temperatures, but the heat hardened flies did poorly on cool days. Beating Heart Muscle With…